ABSTRACT
This chapter pulls together the key findings from the five empirical chapters dealing with the formal, behavioural, and discursive dimensions in the normative and substantive areas. It summarises the changes in the substantive and normative areas across three dimensions and provides a comprehensive assessment of the adoption and implementation of EU rules. This chapter shows that EU rules were institutionalised for the period from 1999 to 2004, but faced retrenchment afterwards, while some elements of adjustment and transformation were visible in different variations across dimensions. This finding indicates that EU rules are no longer institutionalised. The chapter concludes that the conditionality mechanism was highly effective in explaining the variations in the discretion and magnitude of change, but the impact of the domestic-level variables was comparatively higher.
